Speaker: Dr Lesley Ogilvie, Honorary Lecturer in Microbial Ecogenomics, University of Brighton will present a seminar entitled: The human gut virome: from dark matter to microbial source tracking

Host: Simon Carding

Abstract:
High-throughput metagenomic studies are providing unprecedented glimpses into the human gut microbiome, implicating these indigenous communities as a significant factor in human health and wellbeing. In recent years, the bacteriophage component of this ecosystem has been increasingly recognised as a key facet of the human gut microbiome, which potentially impacts its role in human health. We are exploring the gut ecosystem from a viral perspective applying phage ecogenomics to further discern a deeper understanding its inherent characteristics. The application of a genome signature-based approach to dissect conventional gut microbial metagenomes enabled identification of a subset of gut-specific phage sequences poorly represented in existing viral-like-particle (VLP)-derived human gut datasets, which were shown to encode functions of direct relevance to human health, including antibiotic resistance determinants, and revealed the existence of putative ‘viral-enterotypes’ within the human gut virome. Current work is highlighting the potential of applying phage ecogenomics for the development of metagenomic-based microbial source tracking tools (MST) and for deeper characterisation of therapeutic phage. Overall, this fine-scale phage-based dissection of metagenomic datasets is providing a window into the dark matter extant in the human gut virome, with potential biotechnological and biomedical impact.

All staff from organisations on the Norwich Research Park are welcome to attend.